Four For Friday: Why Your Recruiting Team Should Focus On HR Data

Michael Altiero July 10, 2015

Every Friday, The DDR shines a light on the best data-centric articles and resources from across the internet, social media, and industry.

According to a recent LinkedIn survey, 76% of recruiting leaders think they’re underutilizing data. This is just one of the interesting statistics uncovered around the use and adoption of data analytics in HR. But many in HR and talent acquisition ask the big question: Why should HR leaders embrace big data? This and more are explored in this week’s Four For Friday.

Sheryl Boswell, Director of Marketing at Monster Canada, explains how her company uses data to improve its ability to better serve employers. She also gives a few examples of how HR can use big data to be competitive in today’s recruiting landscape:

Talent acquisition and pipeline planning: Organizations can be more strategic and proactive, gaining a better understanding of why an opportunity might be appealing to a candidate or what location might be the best fit for a recruitment campaign.

Saving time: Data can help reduce the time it takes to fill a position by making the search more accurate and the candidates better suited.

Job posting effectiveness: Organizations can determine trends and response levels based on demographics, location, and industry.

Evaluate candidate quality: Analytics can allow recruiters to more efficiently assess a wider range of candidates than traditionally possible.

When and how does HR’s data fall short in the eyes of key business partners? This was just one of the questions that DDI asked to HR leaders in a follow up to its 2014/2015 Global Leadership Forecast. They then asked the same leaders to place themselves into one of the following roles based on their contributions to the business:

“Having a quality data strategy is a must for every recruitment business.” This article from Barclay Jones explains why a culture of data quality is a challenge for most, but is a necessity in today’s recruiting world and can be very rewarding. The article also goes on to explain 7 ways talent acquisition leaders and recruiters can benefit from a better HR data strategy.

Savita V. Jayaram says that “predictive HR metrics is the future of industry going forward, and there is an increasing need for HR teams to measure and optimize numbers, and start getting better with people analytics.” She goes on to explain a few ways that predictive HR metrics and data can help talent acquisition teams including boosting employee engagement and analysis of top performers. But when it comes to data and analytics always remember, “If you measure the wrong thing you do the wrong thing.”